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Choosing The Right Gun For You – Part 3

Sifting through the endless firearm options can be confusing. In this four part series, Carrie Lightfoot and guest Ashley Suris answer your questions to help walk you through making the right decision. In this video we discuss different types of safeties.

Transcription:

Carrie: Hi, I am Carrie Lightfoot of The Well Armed Woman and welcome to part three in our video series Choosing The Right Gun For You. I am joined again this week by my cohost Ashley Suris who has an extensive background in gun sales, guns and working with our chapter program. Today the focus of this video is going to be safeties and some of the questions that come around the use of safeties. So, Ashley do we have a couple of questions?

What About Safeties?

Ashley: We do, Diana says “I’m getting ready to purchase my first gun should I get one with a safety”? And Shanna says “I really like the Glock but I want a safety. Any Suggestions”?

Carrie: These are great questions, so let’s talk about the first question first about the need for a safety. Should or shouldn’t someone get a gun with a safety. So, the safety, it’s important to remind you that it’s a mechanical feature. All safety features in firearms are mechanical and that means they can fail. It’s just important to know that. But there are different forms of safeties that come on firearms. I think the most common and what most people are asking when they ask that question is, should it have a manual safety, and let’s see if we can find one.

Carrie: We have got a number of firearms on the table again today, we like to mix it up and these are a little different than the last time. They have all been cleared and you can see all the actions are open so there is no live ammunition anywhere in this studio, right? Ok.

Manual Safety

Carrie: So, the manual safety, let’s see which one, I know the Sig has one, here is the manual safety here. So, that is a manual switch. Which would require…Lets close that…which would require you pushing it up or pushing it down to off to shoot. Let’s talk about those first. So, what are your thoughts Ashley on the use of a manual safety?

Ashley: Well I think more than anything it comes down to personal preference. For me personally I don’t carry a firearm with the safety because I don’t want to have to deal with that extra step of turning that safety off in the seconds in which I may have to defend my life. But there are several thousands of people out there that do prefer to have that safety there just for an added security feature.

Carrie: You know if you have children around or perhaps if you are a brand new conceal carrier, I think having the manual safety can be somewhat of a comfort. Would you agree?

Ashley: I would agree, yes

Do You Give Up Precious Time?

Carrie: But it does take that extra time, and we have to train for that. Because when you draw your firearm, you now have to release that safety as you’re moving into your extend to shoot your firearm. That is something I think to really consider. Some models have them and some models don’t obviously. There are a number of different internal and external safeties that are found in different firearms.

Carrie: So, our second question that came in was about the Glock. Let’s talk about the Glock safety

Do Glocks Have Safeties?

Ashley: Yeah, absolutely. So, Shanna had said she really likes the Glock but wants a gun with a safety. And what I think a lot of people don’t realize is while the Glock’s don’t have the external thumb safeties that you are used to seeing, they do have safety features built into them in particular, the trigger system. As you can see here the trigger has two separate parts that are inter-dependent with one and other and both parts must be fully compressed together for the gun to fire. You can see one on the Glock here

Carrie: And I think we also have one here…

Ashley: and the Ruger also has one where you have that two-part trigger. The gun wont fire unless both parts of the trigger are moved together and simultaneously.

Carrie: So, it is a safety feature, like you said. It’s just not what we are used to seeing or not what most people think of. When they think of safety they think of the manual lever we saw here on the Sig. I’ll turn that over so they can see that side button.

Carrie: So not all safety features are things that we can see.

Ashley: Exactly

Other Types of Safeties

Carrie: So, what would be some other types of safeties that maybe we wouldn’t be so aware of?

Ashley: Well I think what is most important to remember is that most modern firearms are designed internally so that the gun will not fire unless the trigger is depressed. So, you hear concerns of people worried about, well what happens if I drop my gun, is it going to go off? That’s typically not the case modern firearms are very well-built and while they can fail, the likelihood of a gun firing when its dropped is very small.

Carrie: And that is really good to know, it really is. There is one other form of a safety that we don’t have represented on the table and that’s a grip safety. That is a lever that sits on the backstrap here, that has to be fully depressed to allow that trigger to be pulled. I’m sorry we don’t have one on the table but that’s called a grip safety.

Which is right For You?

Carrie: So, there are a lot of different features I think that are available on all of the modern guns today. The question is what is the right one for you. And which one can you be comfortable with and if it’s an external safety that requires some manipulation before you can fire. That’s a really important thing to consider, and to think about that you have to train for that and are you comfortable giving up that time.

Carrie: We didn’t talk about the trigger on the revolver, the double action revolver, part of its safety feature is just that really long hard double action trigger pull because you really have to intend to pull that trigger for it to go off. That’s a form of a safety feature as well.

Final Thoughts

So, boy we have covered a lot of different things and there’s are a lot of different features and you really just need to find out for yourself what’s the best choice for you. So, I hope this was helpful, thank you so much Ashley and we have video four coming out soon and we are going to be talking about shopping for a gun and all the things we need to know about how to shop for your firearm. You can visit thewellarmedwoman.com for all of these videos and a lot of articles that will help you make these decisions. So, thank you and we will see you on the next one!

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